And here we can remove a great stumbling-block to the recognition

of the _identity of philosophy with history_. I have attempted to

renovate, modify, and establish this doctrine with many analyses and

with many arguments in another volume of my works.[1] It is, however,

frequently very difficult, being rather an object of irresistible

argument than of complete persuasion and adhesion. Seeking for the

various causes of this difficulty, I have come upon one which seems

to me to be the principal and fundamental. This is precisely the

conception of history not as living contemporary history, but as

history that is dead and belongs to the past, as _chronicle_ (or

philological history, which, as we know, can be reduced to chronicle).

It is undeniable that when history is taken as chronicle its identity

with philosophy cannot be made clear to the mind, because it does not

exist. But when chronicle has been reduced to its proper practical and

mnemonical function, and history has been raised to the knowledge of

the _eternal present_, it reveals itself as all one with philosophy,

which for its part is never anything but the thought of the eternal

present. This, be it well understood, provided always that the dualism

of ideas and facts has been superseded, of _vérités de raison_ and

_vérités de fait_, the concept of philosophy as contemplation of

vérités de raison, and that of history as the amassing of brute facts,

of coarse _vérités de fait_. We have recently found this tenacious

dualism in the act of renewing itself, disguised beneath the axiom that

_le propre de l'histoire est de savoir, le propre de la philosophie

est de comprendre_. This amounts to the absurd distinction of knowing

without understanding and of understanding without knowing, which would

thus be the doubly dis-heartening theoretical fate of man. But such a

dualism and the conception of the world which accompanies it, far from

being true philosophy, are the perpetual source whence springs that

imperfect attempt at philosophizing which is called _religion_ when

one is within its magic circle, _mythology_ when one has left it. Will

it be useful to attack transcendency, and to claim the character of

immanence for reality and for philosophy? It will certainly be of use;

but I do not feel the necessity of doing so, at any rate here and now.

And since history, properly understood, abolishes the idea of a

_universal history_, so philosophy, immanent and identical with

history, abolishes the idea of a _universal philosophy_--that is to

say, of the _closed_ system. The two negations correspond and are

indeed fundamentally one (because closed systems, like universal

histories, are cosmological romances), and both receive empirical

confirmation from the tendency of the best spirits of our day to

refrain from 'universal histories' and from 'definitive systems,'

leaving both to compilers, to believers, and to the credulous of

every sort. This tendency was implicit in the last great philosophy,

that of Hegel, but it was opposed in its own self by old survivals

and altogether betrayed in execution, so that this philosophy also

converts itself into a cosmological romance. Thus it may be said

that what at the beginning of the nineteenth century was merely a

simple _presentiment_ becomes changed into _firm consciousness_ at

the beginning of the twentieth. This defies the fears of the timid

lest the knowledge of the universal should be thus compromised,

and indeed maintains that only in this way can such knowledge be

truly and perpetually acquired, because dynamically obtained. Thus

history becoming _actual history_ and philosophy becoming _historical

philosophy_ have freed themselves, the one from the anxiety of not

being able to know that which is not known, only because it was or will

be known, and the other from the despair of never being able to attain

to definite truth--that is to say, both are freed from the phantom of

the 'thing in itself.'

[1] In the _Logic_, especially in Part II, Chapter IV.

IV

IDEAL GENESIS AND DISSOLUTION OF THE 'PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY'

I

The conception of the so-called 'philosophy of history' is perpetually

opposed to and resisted by the deterministic conception of history. Not

only is this clearly to be seen from inspection, but it is also quite

evident logically, because the 'philosophy of history' represents the

transcendental conception of the real, determinism the immanent.

But on examining the facts it is not less certain that historical

determinism perpetually generates the 'philosophy of history'; nor

is this fact less evidently logical than the preceding, because

determinism is naturalism, and therefore immanent, certainly, but

insufficiently and falsely immanent. Hence it should rather be

said that it wishes to be, but is not, immanent, and whatever its

efforts may be in the contrary direction, it becomes converted into

transcendency. All this does not present any difficulty to one who

has clearly in mind the conceptions of the transcendent and of the

immanent, of the philosophy of history as transcendency and of the

deterministic or naturalistic conception of history as a false

immanence. But it will be of use to see in more detail how this process

of agreements and oppositions is developed and solved with reference to

the problem of history.

"First collect the facts, then connect them causally"; this is the way

that the work of the historian is represented in the deterministic

conception. _Après la collection des faits, la recherche des causes,_

to repeat the very common formula in the very words of one of the most

eloquent and picturesque theorists of that school, Taine. Facts are

brute, dense, real indeed, but not illumined with the light of science,

not intellectualized. This intelligible character must be conferred

upon them by means of the search for causes. But it is very well known

what happens when one fact is linked to another as its cause, forming a

chain of causes and effects: we thus inaugurate an infinite regression,

and we never succeed in finding the cause or causes to which we can

finally attach the chain that we have been so industriously putting

together.

Some, maybe many, of the theorists of history get out of the difficulty

in a truly simple manner: they break or let fall at a certain point

their chain, which is already broken at another point at the other

end (the effect which they have undertaken to consider). They operate

with their fragment of chain as though it were something perfect and

closed in itself, as though a straight line divided at two points

should include space and be a figure. Hence, too, the doctrine that we

find among the methodologists of history: that it is only necessary

for history to seek out 'proximate' causes. This doctrine is intended

to supply a logical foundation to the above process. But who can ever

say what are the 'proximate causes'? Thought, since it is admitted

that it is unfortunately obliged to think according to the chain of

causes, will never wish to know anything but 'true' causes, be they

near or distant in space and time (space, like time, _ne fait rien

à l'affaire_). In reality, this theory is a fig-leaf, placed there

to cover a proceeding of which the historian, who is a thinker and a

critic, is ashamed, an act of will which is useful, but which for that

very reason is wilful. The fig-leaf, however, is a sign of modesty, and

as such has its value, because, if shame be lost, there is a risk that

it will finally be declared that the 'causes' at which an arbitrary

halt has been made are the 'ultimate' causes, the 'true' causes, thus

raising the caprice of the individual to the rank of an act creative

of the world, treating it as though it were God, the God of certain

theologians, whose caprice is truth. I should not wish again to quote

Taine just after having said this, for he is a most estimable author,

not on account of his mental constitution, but of his enthusiastic

faith in science; yet it suits me to quote him nevertheless. Taine,

in his search for causes, having reached a cause which he sometimes

calls the 'race' and sometimes the 'age,' as for instance in his

history of English literature, when he reaches the concept of the

'man of the North' or 'German,' with the character and intellect that

would be suitable to such a person--coldness of the senses, love

of abstract ideas, grossness of taste, and contempt for order and

regularity--gravely affirms: _Là s'arrête la recherche: on est tombé

sur quelque disposition primitive, sur quelque trait propre à toutes

les sensations, à toutes les conceptions d'un siècle ou d'une race, sur

quelque particularité inséparable de toutes les démarches de son esprit

et de son cour. Ce sont là les grandes causes, les causes universelles

et permanentes._ What that primitive and insurmountable thing contained

was known to Taine's imagination, but criticism is ignorant of it; for

criticism demands that the genesis of the facts or groups of facts

designated as 'age' and 'race' should be given, and in demanding their

genesis declares that they are neither 'universal' nor 'permanent,'

because no universal and permanent 'facts' are known, as far as I

am aware, certainly not _le Germain_ and _l'homme du Nord_; nor are

mummies facts, though they last some thousands of years, but not for

ever--they change gradually, but they do change.

Thus whoever adopts the deterministic conception of history, provided

that he decides to abstain from cutting short the inquiry that he has

undertaken in an arbitrary and fanciful manner, is of necessity obliged

to recognize that the method adopted does not attain the desired end.

And since he has begun to think history, although by means of an

insufficient method, no course remains to him save that of beginning

all over again and following a different path, or that of going

forward but changing his direction. The naturalistic presupposition,

which still holds its ground ("first collect the facts, then seek

the causes": what is more evident and more unavoidable than that?),

necessarily leads to the second alternative. But to adopt the second

alternative is to supersede determinism, it is to transcend nature

and its causes, it is to propose a method opposite to that hitherto

followed--that is to say, to renounce the category of cause for

another, which cannot be anything but that of end, an extrinsic and

transcendental end, which is the analogous opposite, corresponding to

the cause. Now the search for the transcendental end is the 'philosophy

of history.'

The consequent naturalist (I mean by this he who 'continues to think,'

or, as is generally said, to draw the consequences) cannot avoid this

inquiry, nor does he ever avoid it, in whatever manner he conceive

his new inquiry. This he cannot even do, when he tries, by declaring

that the end or 'ultimate cause' is unknowable, because (as elsewhere

remarked) an unknowable affirmed is an unknowable in some way known.

Naturalism is always crowned with a philosophy of history, whatever

its mode of formulation: whether it explain the universe as composed

of atoms that strike one another and produce history by means of their

various shocks and gyrations, to which they can also put an end by

returning to their primitive state of dispersion, whether the hidden

God be termed Matter or the Unconscious or something else, or whether,

finally, He be conceived as an Intelligence which avails itself of

the chain of causes in order to actualize His counsels. And every

philosopher of history is on the other hand a naturalist, because he

is a dualist and conceives a God and a world, an idea and a fact in

addition to or beneath the Idea, a kingdom of ends and a kingdom or

sub-kingdom of causes, a celestial city and one that is more or less

diabolical or terrene. Take any deterministic historical work and you

will find or discover in it, explicit or understood, transcendency (in

Taine, for example, it goes by the name of 'race' or of '_siècle,_'

which are true and proper deities); take any work of 'philosophy of

history' and dualism and naturalism will be found there (in Hegel, for

example, when he admits rebellious and impotent facts which resist or

are unworthy the dominion of the idea). And we shall see more and more

clearly how from the entrails of naturalism comes inevitably forth the

'philosophy of history.'

II

But the 'philosophy of history' is just as contradictory as the

deterministic conception from which it arises and to which it is

opposed. Having both accepted and superseded the method of linking

brute facts together, it no longer finds facts to link (for these

have already been linked together, as well as might be, by means

of the category of cause), but brute facts, on which it must confer

rather a 'meaning' than a linking, representing them as aspects of a

transcendental process, a theophany. Now those facts, in so far as

they are brute facts, are mute, and the transcendency of the process

requires an organ, not that of thought that thinks or produces facts,

but an extra-logical organ, in order to be conceived and represented

(such, for example, as thought which proceeds abstractly _a priori,_

in the manner of Fichte), and this is not to be found in the spirit,

save as a negative moment, as the void of effective logical thought.

The void of logical thought is immediately filled with _praxis,_ or

what is called sentiment, which then appears as poetry, by theoretical

refraction. There is an evident poetical character running through all

'philosophies of history.' Those of antiquity represented historical

events as strife between the gods of certain peoples or of certain

races or protectors of certain individuals, or between the god of light

and truth and the powers of darkness and lies. They thus expressed the

aspirations of peoples, groups, or individuals toward hegemony, or of

man toward goodness and truth. The most modern of modern forms is that

inspired by various national and ethical feelings (the Italian, the

Germanic, the Slav, etc.), or which represents the course of history as

leading to the kingdom of liberty, or as the passage from the Eden of

primitive communism, through the Middle Ages of slavery, servitude, and

wages, toward the restoration of communism, which shall no longer be

unconscious but conscious, no longer Edenic but human. In poetry, facts

are no longer facts but words, not reality but images, and so there

would be no occasion to censure them, if it remained pure poetry.

But it does not so remain, because those images and words are placed

there as ideas and facts--that is to say, as myths: progress, liberty,

economy, technique, science are myths, in so far as they are looked

upon as agents external to the facts. They are myths no less than God

and the Devil, Mars and Venus, Jove and Baal, or any other cruder forms

of divinity. And this is the reason why the deterministic conception,

after it has produced the 'philosophy of history,' which opposes it,

is obliged to oppose its own daughter in its turn, and to appeal from

the realm of ends to that of causal connexions, from imagination to

observation, from myths to facts.

The reciprocal confutation of historical determinism and the philosophy

of history, which makes of each a void or a nothing--that is to say,

a single void or nothing--seems to the eclectics as usual to be the

reciprocal fulfilment of two entities, which effect or should effect

an alliance for mutual support. And since eclecticism flourishes in

contemporary philosophy, mutato nomine, it is not surprising that

besides the duty of investigating the causes to history also is

assigned that of ascertaining the 'meaning' or the 'general plan' of

the course of history (see the works on the philosophy of history of

Labriola, Simmel, and Rickert). Since, too, writers on method are

wont to be empirical and therefore eclectic, we find that with them

also history is divided into the history which unites and criticizes

documents and reconstructs events, and 'philosophy of history' (see

Bernheim's manual, typical of all of them). Finally, since ordinary

thought is eclectic, nothing is more easy than to find agreement as to

the thesis that simple history, which presents the series of facts,

does not suffice, but that it is necessary that thought should return

to the already constituted chain of events, in order to discover

there the hidden design and to answer the questions as to whence we

come and whither we go. This amounts to saying that a 'philosophy of

history' must be posited side by side with history. This eclecticism,

which gives substance to two opposite voids and makes them join

hands, sometimes attempts to surpass itself and to mingle those two

fallacious sciences or parts of science. Then we hear 'philosophy of

history' defended, but with the caution that it must be conducted with

'scientific' and 'positive' method, by means of the search for the

cause, thus revealing the action of divine reason or providence.[1]

Ordinary thought quickly consents to this programme, but afterward

fails to carry it out.[2]

There is nothing new here either for those who know: 'philosophy

of history' to be constructed by means of 'positive methods,'

transcendency to be demonstrated by means of the methods of false

immanence, is the exact equivalent in the field of historical studies

to that "metaphysic to be constructed by means of the experimental

method" which was recommended by the neocritics (Zeller and others),

for it claimed, not indeed to supersede two voids that reciprocally

confute one another, but to make them agree together, and, after

having given substance to them, to combine them in a single substance.

I should not like to describe the impossibilities contained in the

above as the prodigies of an alchemist (the metaphor seems to be too

lofty), but rather as the medleys of bad cooks.

[1] See, for example, the work of Flint; but since, less radical than

Flint, Hegel and the Hegelians themselves also ended in admitting the

concourse of the two opposed methods, traces of this perversion are

also to be found in their 'philosophies of history.' Here, too, is to

be noted the false analogy by which Hegel was led to discover the same

relation between a priori and historical facts as between mathematics

and natural facts: _Man muss mit dem Kreise dessen, worin die

Prinzipien fallen, wenn man es so nennen will, a priori vertraut sein,

so gut als Kepler mit den Ellipsen, mit Kuben und Quadraten und mit den

Gedanken von Verhältnissen derselben_ a priori _schon vorher bekannt

sein musste, ehe er aus den empirischen Daten seine unsterblichen

Gesetze, welche aus Bestimmungen jener Kreise von Vorstellungen

bestehen, erfinden konnte._ (_Cf. Vorles. üb. d. Philos, d. Gesch.,_

ed. Brunstäd, pp. 107-108.)

[2] Not even the above-mentioned Flint carried it out, for he lost

him-self in preliminaries of historical documentation and never

proceeded to the promised construction.

III

The true remedy for the contradictions of historical determinism and of

the 'philosophy of history' is quite other than this. To obtain it, we

must accept the result of the preceding confutation, which shows that

both are futile, and reject, as lacking thought, both the 'designs'

of the philosophy of history and the causal chains of determinism.

When these two shadows have been dispersed we shall find ourselves

at the starting-place: we are again face to face with disconnected

brute facts, with facts that are connected, but not understood, for

which determinism had tried to employ the cement of causality, the

'philosophy of history,' the magic wand of finality. What shall we

do with these facts? How shall we make them clear rather than dense

as they were, organic rather than inorganic, intelligible rather

than unintelligible? Truly, it seems difficult to do anything with

them, especially to effect their desired transformation. The spirit

is helpless before that which is, or is supposed to be, external to

it. And when facts are understood in that way we are apt to assume

again that attitude of contempt of the philosophers for history which

has been well-nigh constant since antiquity almost to the end of the

eighteenth century (for Aristotle history was "less philosophical" and

less serious than poetry, for Sextus Empiricus it was "unmethodical

material"; Kant did not feel or understand history). The attitude

amounts to this: leave ideas to the philosophers and brute facts to the

historians--let us be satisfied with serious things and leave their

toys to the children.

But before having recourse to such a temptation, it will be prudent

to ask counsel of methodical doubt (which is always most useful), and

to direct the attention precisely upon those brute and disconnected

facts from which the causal method claims to start and before which we,

who are now abandoned by it and by its complement, the philosophy of

history, appear to find ourselves again. Methodical doubt will suggest

above all things the thought that those facts are a _presupposition_

that has _not been proved_, and it will lead to the inquiry as to

_whether the proof can be obtained_. Having attempted the proof, we

shall finally arrive at the conclusion that _those facts really do not

exist._

For who, as a matter of fact, affirms their existence? Precisely the

spirit, at the moment when it is about to undertake the search for

causes. But when accomplishing that act the spirit does not already

possess the brute facts (_d'abord la collection des faits_) and then

seek the causes (_après, la recherche des causes_); but it makes

the _facts brute_ by that very act--that is to say, it posits them

itself in that way, because it is of use to it so to posit them.

The search for causes, undertaken by history, is not in any way

different from the procedure of naturalism, already several times

illustrated, which abstractly analyses and classifies reality. And

to illustrate abstractly and to classify implies at the same time to

judge in classifying--that is to say, to treat facts, not as acts of

the spirit, conscious in the spirit that thinks them, but as external

brute facts. The _Divine Comedy_ is that poem which we create again

in our imagination in all its particulars as we read it and which we

understand critically as a particular determination of the spirit,

and to which we therefore assign its place in history, with all its

surroundings and all its relations. But when this actuality of our

thought and imagination has come to an end--that is to say, when that

mental process is completed--we are able, by means of a new act of

the spirit, separately to analyse its elements. Thus, for instance,

we shall classify the concepts relating to 'Florentine civilization,'

or to 'political poetry,' and say that the _Divine Comedy_ was an

effect of Florentine civilization, and this in its turn an effect

of the strife of the communes, and the like. We shall also thus

have prepared the way for those absurd problems which used to annoy

de Sanctis so much in relation to the work of Dante, and which he

admirably described when he said that they arise only when lively

æsthetic expression has grown cold and poetical work has fallen into

the hands of dullards addicted to trifles. But if we stop in time and

do not enter the path of those absurdities, if we restrict ourselves

purely and simply to the naturalistic moment, to classification, and

to the classificatory judgment (which is also causal connexion), in an

altogether practical manner, without drawing any deductions from it, we

shall have done nothing that is not perfectly legitimate; indeed, we

shall be exercising our right and bowing to a rational necessity, which

is that of naturalizing, when naturalization is of use, but not beyond

those limits. Thus the materialization of the facts and the external

or causal binding of them together are altogether justified as pure

naturalism. And even the maxim which bids us to stop at 'proximate'

causes--that is to say, not to force classification so far that it

loses all practical utility--will find its justification. To place

the concept of the _Divine Comedy_ in relation to that of 'Florentine

civilization' may be of use, but it will be of no use whatever,

or infinitely less use, to place it in relation to the class of

'Indo-European civilization' or to the 'civilization of the white man.'

IV

Let us then return with greater confidence to the point of departure,

the true point of departure--that is to say, not to that of facts

already disorganized and naturalized, but to that of the mind

that thinks and constructs the fact. Let us raise up the debased

countenances of the calumniated 'brute facts,' and we shall see the

light of thought resplendent upon their foreheads. And that true point

of departure will reveal itself not merely as a point of departure, but

both as a point of arrival and of departure, not as the first step in

historical construction, but the whole of history in its construction,

which is also its self-construction. Historical determinism, and all

the more 'philosophy of history,' leave the _reality of history_ behind

them, though they directed their journey thither, a journey which

became so erratic and so full of useless repetitions.

We shall make the ingenuous Taine confess that what we are saying

is the truth when we ask him what he means by the _collection des

faits_ and learn from him in reply that the collection in question

consists of two stages or moments, in the first of which documents

are revived in order to attain, _à travers la distance des temps,

l'homme vivant, agissant, doué de passions, muni d'habitudes, avec

sa voix et sa physionomie, avec ses gestes et ses habits, distinct

et complet comme celui que tout à l'heure nous avons quitté dans la

rue;_ and in the second is sought and found _sous l'homme extérieur

l'homme intérieur, "l'homme invisible," "le centre," "le groupe des

facultés et des sentiments qui produit le reste," "le drame intérieur,"

"la psychologie."_ Something very different, then, from collections

de faits I If the things mentioned by our author really do come to

pass, if we really do make live again in imagination individuals and

events, and if we think what is within them--that is to say, if we

think the synthesis of intuition and concept, which is thought in its

concreteness--history is already achieved: what more is wanted? There

is nothing more to seek. Taine replies: "We must seek causes." That is

to say, we must slay the living 'fact' thought by thought, separate

its abstract elements--a useful thing, no doubt, but useful for memory

and practice. Or, as is the custom of Taine, we must misunderstand and

exaggerate the value of the function of this abstract analysis, to lose

ourselves in the mythology of races and ages, or in other different but

none the less similar things. Let us beware how we slay poor facts, if

we wish to think as historians, and in so far as we are such and really

think in that way we shall not feel the necessity for having recourse

either to the extrinsic bond of causes, historical determinism, or to

that which is equally extrinsic of transcendental ends, philosophy of

history. The fact historically thought has no cause and no end outside

itself, but only in itself, coincident with its real qualities and with

its qualitative reality. Because (it is well to note in passing) the

determination of facts as real facts indeed, but of _unknown nature_,

asserted but not understood, is itself also an illusion of naturalism

(which thus heralds its other illusion, that of the 'philosophy of

history'). In thought, reality and quality, existence and essence, are

all one, and it is not possible to affirm a fact as real without at the

same time knowing what fact it is--that is, without qualifying it.

Returning to and remaining in or moving in the concrete fact, or,

rather, making of oneself thought that thinks the fact concretely, we

experience the continual formation and the continual progress of our

historical thought and also make clear to ourselves the history of

historiography, which proceeds in the same manner. And we see how (I

limit myself to this, in order not to allow the eye to wander too far)

from the days of the Greeks to our own historical understanding has

always been enriching and deepening itself, not because abstract causes

and transcendental ends of human things have ever been recovered,

but only because an ever increasing consciousness of them has been

acquired. Politics and morality, religion and philosophy and art,

science and culture and economy, have become more complex concepts and

at the same time better determined and unified both in themselves and

with respect to the whole. Correlatively with this, the histories of

these forms of activity have become ever more complex and more firmly

united. We know 'the causes' of civilization as little as did the

Greeks; and we know as little as they of the god or gods who control

the fortunes of humanity. But we know the theory of civilization better

than did the Greeks, and, for instance, we know (as they did not know,

or did not know with equal clearness and security) that poetry is an

eternal form of the theoretic spirit, that regression or decadence is a

relative concept, that the world is not divided into ideas and shadows

of ideas, or into potencies and acts, that slavery is not a category

of the real, but a historical form of economic, and so forth. Thus it

no longer occurs to anyone (save to the survivals or fossils, still to

be found among us) to write the history of poetry on the principle of

the pedagogic ends that the poets are supposed to have had in view:

on the contrary, we strive to determine the forms expressive of their

sentiments. We are not at all bewildered when we find ourselves before

what are called 'decadences,' but we seek out what new and greater

thing was being developed by means of their dialectic. We do not

consider the work of man to be miserable and illusory, and aspiration

and admiration for the skies and for the ascesis joined thereunto

and averse to earth as alone worthy of admiration and imitation. We

recognize the reality of power in the act, and in the shadows the

solidity of the ideas, and on earth heaven. Finally, we do not find

that the possibility of social life is lost owing to the disappearance

of the system of slavery. Such a disappearance would have been the

catastrophe of reality, if slaves were natural to reality--and so forth.

This conception of history and the consideration of historiographical

work in itself make it possible for us to be just toward historical

determinism and to the 'philosophy of history,' which, by their

continual reappearance, have continually pointed to the gaps in our

knowledge, both historical and philosophical, and with their false

provisional solutions have heralded the correct solutions of the new

problems which we have been propounding. Nor has it been said that

they will henceforth cease to exercise such a function (which is the

beneficial function of Utopias of every sort). And although historical

determinism and the 'philosophy of history' have no history, because

they do not develop, they yet receive a content from the relation in

which they stand to history, which does develop--that is to say,

history develops in them, notwithstanding their covering, extrinsic

to their content, which compels to think even him who proposes to

schematize and to imagine without thinking. For there is a great

difference between the determinism that can now appear, after Descartes

and Vico and Kant and Hegel, and that which appeared after Aristotle;

between the philosophy of history of Hegel and Marx and that of

gnosticism and Christianity. Transcendency and false immanency are at

work in both these conceptions respectively; but the abstract forms

and mythologies that have appeared in more mature epochs of thought

contain this new maturity in themselves. In proof of this, let us

pause but a moment (passing by the various forms of naturalism) at

the case of the 'philosophy of history.' We observe already a great

difference between the philosophy of history, as it appears in the

Homeric world, and that of Herodotus, with whom the conception of the

anger of the gods is a simulacrum of the moral law, which spares the

humble and treads the proud underfoot; from Herodotus to the Fate of

the Stoics, a law to which the gods themselves are subjected, and from

this to the conception of Providence, which appears in late antiquity

as wisdom that rules the world; from this pagan providence again to

Christianity, which is divine justice, evangelical preparation, and

educative care of the human race, and so on, to the refined providence

of the theologians, which as a rule excludes divine intervention

and operates by means of secondary causes, to that of Vico, which

operates as dialectic of the spirit, to the Idea of Hegel, which is the

gradual conquest of the consciousness of self, which liberty achieves

during the course of history, till we finally reach the mythology of

progress and of civilization, which still persists and is supposed to

tend toward the final abolition of prejudices and superstitions, to

be carried out by means of the increasing power and divulgation of

positive science.

In this way the 'philosophy of history' and historical determinism

sometimes attain to the thinness and transparency of a veil, which

covers and at the same time reveals the concreteness of the real in

thought. Mechanical causes thus appear idealized, transcendent deities

humanized, and facts are in great part divested of their brutal aspect.

But however thin the veil may be, it remains a veil, and however

clear the truth may be, it is not altogether clear, for at bottom

the false persuasion still persists that history is constructed with

the 'material' of brute facts, with the 'cement' of causes, and with

the 'magic' of ends, as with three successive or concurrent methods.

The same thing occurs with religion, which in lofty minds liberates

itself almost altogether from vulgar beliefs, as do its ethics from the

heteronomy of the divine command and from the utilitarianism of rewards

and punishments. Almost altogether, but not altogether, and for this

reason religion will never be philosophy, save by negating itself, and

thus the 'philosophy of history' and historical determinism will become

history only by negating themselves. The reason is that as long as they

proceed in a positive manner dualism will also persist, and with it the

torment of scepticism and agnosticism as a consequence.

The negation of the philosophy of history, in history understood

concretely, is its ideal dissolution, and since that so-called

philosophy is nothing but an abstract and negative moment, our reason

for affirming that _the philosophy of history_ is dead is clear. It

is dead in its positivity, dead as a body of doctrine, dead in this

way, with all the other conceptions and forms of the transcendental.

I do not wish to attach to my brief (but in my opinion sufficient)

treatment of the argument the addition of an explanation which to some

will appear to be (as it appears to me) but little philosophical and

even somewhat trivial. Notwithstanding, since I prefer the accusation

of semi-triviality to that of equivocation, I shall add that since the

criticism of the 'concepts' of cause and transcendental finality does

not forbid the use of these 'words,' when they are simple words (to

talk, for example, in an imaginative way of liberty as of a goddess, or

to say, when about to undertake a study of Dante, that our intention is

to 'seek the cause' or 'causes' of this or that work or act of his),

so nothing forbids our continuing to talk of 'philosophy of history'

and of philosophizing history, meaning the necessity of treating or of

a better treatment of this or that historical problem. Neither does

anything forbid our calling the researches of historical gnoseology

'philosophy of history,' although in this case we are treating the

history, not properly of _history_, but of _historiography_, two things

which are wont to be designated with the same word in Italian as in

other languages. Neither do we wish to prevent the statement (as did a

German professor years ago) that the 'philosophy of history' must be

treated as 'sociology'--that is to say, the adornment with that ancient

title of so-called sociology, the empirical science of the state, of

society and of culture.

These denominations are all permissible in virtue of the same right

as that invoked by the adventurer Casanova when he went before the

magistrates in order to justify himself for having changed his

name--"the right of every man to the letters of the alphabet." But the

question treated above is not one of the letters of the alphabet. The

'philosophy of history,' of which we have briefly shown the genesis and

the dissolution, is not one that is used in various senses, but a most

definite mode of conceiving history--the transcendental mode.

V

THE POSITIVITY OF HISTORY

We therefore meet the well-known saying of Fustel de Coulanges that

there are certainly "history and philosophy, but not the philosophy

of history," with the following: there is neither philosophy nor

history, nor philosophy of history, but history which is philosophy

and philosophy which is history and is intrinsic to history. For this

reason, all the controversies--and foremost of all those concerned

with progress--which philosophers, methodologists of history, and

sociologists believe to belong to their especial province, and flaunt

at the beginning and the end of their treatises, are reduced for us to

simple problems of philosophy, with historical motivation, all of them

connected with the problems of which philosophy treats.

In controversies relating to progress it is asked whether the work of

man be fertile or sterile, whether it be lost or preserved, whether

history have an end, and if so of what sort, whether this end be

attainable in time or only in the infinite, whether history be progress

or regress, or an interchange between progress and regress, greatness

and decadence, whether good or evil prevail in it, and the like. When

these questions have been considered with a little attention we shall

see that they resolve themselves substantially into three points: the

conception of development, that of end, and that of value. That is to

say, they are concerned with the whole of reality, and with history

only when it is precisely the whole of reality. For this reason they

do not belong to supposed particular sciences, to the philosophy of

history, or to sociology, but to philosophy and to history in so far

as it is philosophy. When the ordinary current terminology has been

translated into philosophical terms it calls forth immediately the

thesis, antithesis, and synthesis by means of which those problems

have been thought and solved during the course of philosophy, to

which the reader desirous of instruction must be referred. We can

only mention here that the conception of reality as development is

nothing but the synthesis of the two one-sided opposites, consisting

of permanency without change and of change without permanency, of

an identity without diversity and of a diversity without identity,

for development is a perpetual surpassing, which is at the same

time a perpetual conservation. From this point of view one of the

conceptions that has had the greatest vogue in historical books, that

of _historical circles,_ is revealed as an equivocal attempt to issue

forth from a double one-sidedness and a falling back into it, owing to

an equivocation. Because either the series of circles is conceived as

composed of identicals and we have only permanency, or it is conceived

as of things diverse and we have only change. But if, on the contrary,

we conceive it as circularity that is perpetually identical and at the

same time perpetually diverse, in this sense it coincides with the

conception of development itself.

In like manner, the opposite theses, as to the attainment or the

impossibility of attainment of the end of history, reveal their common

defect of positing the end as _extrinsic_ to history, conceiving

of it either as that which can be reached in time (_progressus ad

finitum_), or as that which can never be attained, but only infinitely

approximated (_progressus ad infinitum_). But where the end has been

correctly conceived as _internal_--that is to say, all one with

development itself--we must conclude that it is attained at every

instant, and at the same time not attained, because every attainment

is the formation of a new prospect, whence we have at every moment the

satisfaction of possession, and arising from this the dissatisfaction

which drives us to seek a new possession.[1]

Finally, the conceptions of history as a passage from evil to good

(progress), or from good to evil (decadence, regression), take their

origin from the same error of entifying and making extrinsic good and

evil, joy and sorrow (which are the dialectical construction of reality

itself). To unite them in the eclectic conception of an alternation of

good and evil, of progress and regress, is incorrect. The true solution

is that of progress understood not as a passage from evil to good, as

though from one state to another, but as the passage from the good to

the better, in which the evil is the good itself seen in the light of

the better.

These are all philosophical solutions which are at variance with

the superficial theses of controversialists (dictated to them by

sentimental motives or imaginative combinations, really mythological

or resulting in mythologies), to the same extent that they are in

accordance with profound human convictions and with the tireless toil,

the trust, the courage, which constitute their ethical manifestations.

By drawing the consequences of the dialectical conception of progress

something more immediately effective can be achieved in respect to the

practice and history of historiography. For we find in that conception

the origin of a historical maxim, in the mouth of every one, yet

frequently misunderstood and frequently violated--that is to say, that

to history pertains not to _judge,_ but to _explain,_ and that it

should be not _subjective_ but _objective._

Misunderstood, because the judging in question is often taken in the

sense of logical judgment, of that judgment which is thinking itself,

and the subjectivity, which would thus be excluded, would be neither

more nor less than the subjectivity of thought. In consequence of this

misunderstanding we hear historians being advised to purge themselves

of theories, to refrain from the disputes arising from them, to

restrict themselves to facts, collecting, arranging, and squeezing out

the sap (even by the statistical method). It is impossible to follow

such advice as this, as may easily be seen, for such 'abstention from

thought' reveals itself as really abstention from 'seriousness of

thought,' as a surreptitious attaching of value to the most vulgar and

contradictory thoughts, transmitted by tradition, wandering about idly

in the mind, or flashing out as the result of momentary caprice. The

maxim is altogether false, understood or misunderstood in this way,

and it must be taken by its opposite--namely, that history must always

judge strictly, and that it must always be energetically subjective

without allowing itself to be confused by the conflicts in which

thought engages or by the risks that it runs. For it is thought itself,

and thought alone, which gets over its own difficulties and dangers,

without falling even here into that frivolous eclecticism which tries

to find a middle term between our judgment and that of others, and

suggests various neutral and insipid forms of judgment.

But the true and legitimate meaning, the original motive for that

'judging,' that 'subjectivity,' which it condemns, is that history

should not apply to the deeds and the personages that are its material

the qualifications of good and evil, as though there really were

good and evil facts in the world, people who are good and people

who are evil. And it is certainly not to be denied that innumerable

historiographers, or those who claim to be historiographers, have

really striven and still strive along those lines, in the vain and

presumptuous attempt to reward the good and punish the evil, to qualify

historical epochs as representing progress or decadence--in a word,

to settle what is good and what is evil, as though it were a question

of separating one element from another in a compound, hydrogen from,

oxygen.

Whoever desires to observe intrinsically the above maxim, and by

doing so to set himself in accordance with the dialectic conception

of progress, must in truth look upon every trace or vestige of

propositions affirming evil, regression, or decadence as real facts,

as a sign of imperfection--in a word, he must condemn every trace

or vestige of _negative_ judgments. If the course of history is not

the passage from evil to good, or alternative good and evil, but the

passage from the good to the better, if history should explain and

not condemn, it will pronounce only _positive_ judgments, and will

forge chains of good, so solid and so closely linked that it will

not be possible to introduce into them even a little link of evil or

to interpose empty spaces, which in so far as they are empty would

not represent good but evil. A fact that seems to be only evil, an

epoch that appears to be one of complete decadence, can be nothing

but a _non-historical_ fact--that is to say, one which has not been

historically treated, not penetrated by thought, and which has remained

the prey of sentiment and imagination.

Whence comes the phenomenology of good and evil, of sin and repentance,

of decadence and resurrection, save from the consciousness of the

agent, from the act which is in labour to produce a new form of

life?[2] And in that act the adversary who opposed us is in the

wrong; the state from which we wish to escape, and from which we

are escaping, is unhappy; the new one toward which we are tending

becomes symbolized as a dreamed-of felicity to be attained, or as

a past condition to restore, which is therefore most beautiful in

recollection (which here is not recollection, but imagination). Every

one knows how these things present them-selves to us in the course

of history, manifesting themselves in poetry, in Utopias, in stories

with a moral, in detractions, in apologies, in myths of love, of

hate, and the like. To the heretics of the Middle Ages and to the

Protestant reformers the condition of the primitive Christians seemed

to be most lovely and most holy, that of papal Christians most evil

and debased. The Sparta of Lycurgus and the Rome of Cincinnatus seemed

to the Jacobins to be as admirable as France under the Carlovingians

and the Capetians was detestable. The humanists looked upon the lives

of the ancient poets and sages as luminous and the life of the Middle

Ages as dense darkness. Even in times near our own has been witnessed

the glorification of the Lombard communes and the depreciation of

the Holy Roman Empire, and the very opposite of this, according as

the facts relating to these historical events were reflected in the

consciousness of an Italian longing for the independence of Italy or

of a German upholding the holy German empire of Prussian hegemony.

And this will always happen, because such is the phenomenology of the

practical consciousness, and these practical valuations will always

be present to some extent in the works of historians. As works, these

are not and cannot ever be pure history, quintessential history; if in

no other way, then in their phrasing and use of metaphors they will

reflect the repercussion of practical needs and efforts directed toward

the future. But the historical consciousness, as such, is logical and

not practical consciousness, and indeed makes the other its object;

history once lived has become in it thought, and the antitheses of will

and feeling that formerly offered resistance have no longer a place in

thought.

For if there are no good and evil facts, but facts that are always good

when understood in their intimate being and concreteness, there are not

opposite sides, but that wider side that embraces both the adversaries

and which happens just to be historical consideration. Historical

consideration, therefore, recognizes as of equal right the Church of

the catacombs and that of Gregory VII, the tribunes of the Roman people

and the feudal barons, the Lombard League and the Emperor Barbarossa.

History never metes out justice, but always _justifies_; she could not

carry out the former act without making herself unjust--that is to say,

confounding thought with life, taking the attractions and repulsions of

sentiment for the judgments of thought.

Poetry is satisfied with the expression of sentiment, and it is worthy

of note that a considerable historian, Schlosser, wishing to reserve

for himself the right and duty of judging historical facts with

Kantian austerity and abstraction, kept his eyes fixed on the _Divine

Comedy_--that is to say, a poetical work--as his model of treatment.

And since there are poetical elements in all myths, we understand why

the conception of history known as _dualistic_--that is to say, of

history as composed of two currents, which mix but never resolve in one

another their waters of good and evil, truth and error, rationality and

irrationality--should have formed a conspicuous part, not only of the

Christian religion, but also of the mythologies (for they really are

such) of humanism and of illuminism. But the detection of this problem

of the duality of values and its solution in the superior unity of

the conception of development is the work of the nineteenth century,

which on this account and on account of other solutions of the same

kind (certainly not on account of its philological and archæological

richness, which was relatively common to the four preceding centuries)

has been well called 'the century of history.'

Not only, therefore, is history unable to discriminate between facts

that are good and facts that are evil, and between epochs that are

progressive and those that are regressive, but it does not begin until

the psychological conditions which rendered possible such antitheses

have been superseded and substituted by an act of the spirit, which

seeks to ascertain what function the fact or the epoch previously

condemned has fulfilled--that is to say, what it has produced of its

own in the course of development, and therefore what it has produced.

And since all facts and epochs are productive in their own way, not

only is not one of them to be condemned in the light of history, but

all are to be praised and venerated. A condemned fact, a fact that is

repugnant, is not yet a historical proposition, it is hardly even the

premiss of a historical problem to be formulated. A negative history is

a non-history so long as its negative process substitutes itself for

thought, which is affirmative, and does not maintain itself within its

practical and moral bounds and limit itself to poetical expressions and

empirical modes of representation, in respect of all of which we can

certainly speak (speak and not think), as we do speak at every moment,

of bad men and periods of decadence and regression.

If the vice of negative history arises from the separation, the

solidification, and the opposition of the dialectical antitheses

of good and evil and the transformation of the ideal moments of

development into entities, that other deviation of history which

may be known as elegiac history arises from the misunderstanding of

another necessity of that conception--that is to say, the perpetual

constancy, the perpetual conservation of what has been acquired. But

this is also false by definition. What is preserved and enriched

in the course of history is history itself, spirituality. The past

does not live otherwise than in the present, as the force of the

present, resolved and transformed in the present. Every particular

form, individual, action, institution, work, thought, is destined to

perish: even art, which is called eternal (and is so in a certain

sense), perishes, for it does not live, save to the extent that it

is reproduced, and therefore transfigured and surrounded with new

light, in the spirit of posterity. Finally, truth itself perishes,

particular and determined truth, because it is not rethinkable, save

when included in the system of a vaster truth, and therefore at the

same time transformed. But those who do not rise to the conception of

pure historical consideration, those who attach themselves with their

whole soul to an individual, a work, a belief, an institution, and

attach themselves so strongly that they cannot separate themselves

from it in order to objectify it before themselves and think it, are

prone to attribute the immortality which belongs to the spirit in

universal to the spirit in one of its particular and determined forms;

and since that form, notwithstanding their efforts, dies, and dies

in their arms, the universe darkens before their gaze, and the only

history that they can relate is the sad one of the agony and death of

beautiful things. This too is poetry, and very lofty poetry. Who can do

otherwise than weep at the loss of a beloved one, at separation from

something dear to him, cannot see the sun extinguished and the earth

tremble and the birds cease their flight and fall to earth, like Dante,

on the loss of his beloved "who was so beautiful"? But history is never

_history of death_, but _history of life_, and all know that the proper

commemoration of the dead is the knowledge of what they did in life,

of what they produced that is working in us, the history of their life

and not of their death, which it behoves a gentle soul to veil, a soul

barbarous and perverse to exhibit in its miserable nakedness and to

contemplate with unhealthy persistence. For this reason all histories

which narrate the death and not the life of peoples, of states, of

institutions, of customs, of literary and artistic ideals, of religious

conceptions, are to be considered false, or, we repeat, simply poetry,

where they attain to the level of poetry. People grow sad and suffer

and lament because that which was is no longer. This would resolve

itself into a mere tautology (because if it was, it is evident that it

is no longer), were it not conjoined to the neglect of recognizing what

of that past has not perished--that is to say, that past in so far as

it is not past but present, the eternal life of the past. It is in this

neglect, in the incorrect view arising out of it, that the falsity of

such histories resides.

It sometimes happens that historians, intent upon narrating those

scenes of anguish in a lugubrious manner and upon celebrating the

funerals which it pleases them to call histories, remain partly

astounded and partly scandalized when they hear a peal of laughter, a

cry of joy, a sigh of satisfaction, or find an enthusiastic impulse

springing up from the documents that they are searching. How, they

ask, could men live, make love, reproduce their species, sing, paint,

discuss, when the trumps were sounding east and west to announce the

end of the world? But they do not see that such an end of the world

exists only in their own imaginations, rich in elegiac motives, but

poor in understanding. They do not perceive that such importunate

trumpet-calls have never in reality existed. These are very useful,

on the other hand, for reminding those who may have forgotten it that

history always pursues her indefatigable work, and that her apparent

agonies are the travail of a new birth, and that what are believed to

be her expiring sighs are moans that announce the birth of a new world.

History differs from the individual who dies because, in the words of

Alcmæon of Crete, he is not able τὴν ἀρχήν τῷ τέλει προσάψαι, to join

his beginning to his end: history never dies, because she always joins

her beginning to her end.

[1] For the complete development of these conceptions, see my study

of _The Conception of Becoming_, in the _Saggio sullo Hegel seguito

da altri scritti di storia della filosofia_, pp. 149-175 (Bari,

1913). (English translation of the work on Hegel by Douglas Ainslie.

Macmillan, London.)

[2] For what relates to this section, see my treatment of _Judgments of

Value,_ in the work before cited.

VI

THE HUMANITY OF HISTORY

Enfranchising itself from servitude to extra-mundane caprice and

to blind natural necessity, freeing itself from transcendency and

from false immanence (which is in its turn transcendency), thought

conceives history as the work of man, as the product of human will

and intellect, and in this manner enters that form of history which

we shall call _humanistic._ This humanism first appears as in simple

contrast to nature or to extra-mundane powers, and posits dualism.

On the one side is man, with his strength, his intelligence, his

reason, his prudence, his will for the good; on the other there is

something that resists him, strives against him, upsets his wisest

plans, breaks the web that he has been weaving and obliges him to weave

it all over again. History, envisaged from the view-point of this

conception, is developed entirely from the first of these two sides,

because the other does not afford a dialectical element which can be

continually met and superseded by the first, giving rise to a sort of

interior collaboration, but represents the absolutely extraneous, the

capricious, the accidental, the meddler, the ghost at the feast. Only

in the former do we find rationality combined with human endeavour,

and thus the possibility of a rational explication of history. What

comes from the other side is announced, but not explained: it is not

material for history, but at the most for chronicle. This first form of

humanistic history is known under the various names of _rationalistic,

intellectualistic, abstractistic, individualistic, psychological_

history, and especially under that of _pragmatic_ history. It is a

form generally condemned by the consciousness of our times, which has

employed these designations, especially _rationalism_ and _pragmatism_,

to represent a particular sort of historiographical insufficiency and

inferiority, and has made proverbial the most characteristic pragmatic

explanations of institutions and events, as types of misrepresentation

into which one must beware of falling if one wish to think history

seriously. But as happens in the progress of culture and science, even

if the condemnation be cordially accepted and no hesitation entertained

as to drawing practical consequences from it in the field of actuality,

there is not an equally clear consciousness of the reasons for this,

or of the thought process by means of which it has been attained. This

process we may briefly describe as follows.

Pragmatic finds the reasons for historical facts in man, but in man

_in so far as he is an individual made abstract_, and thus opposed

as such not only to the universe, but to other men, who have also

been made abstract. History thus appears to consist of the mechanical

action and reaction of beings, each one of whom is shut up in himself.

Now no historical process is intelligible under such an arrangement,

for the sum of the addition is always superior to the numbers added.

To such an extent is this true that, not knowing which way to turn

in order to make the sum come out right, it became necessary to

excogitate the doctrine of 'little causes,' which were supposed to

produce 'great effects.' This doctrine is absurd, for it is clear

that great effects can only have real causes (if the illegitimate

conceptions of great and small, of cause and effect, be applicable

here). Such a formula, then, far from expressing the law of historical

facts, unconsciously expresses the defects of the doctrine, which

is inadequate for its purpose. And since the rational explanation

fails, there arise crowds of fancies to take its place, which are all

conceived upon the fundamental motive of the abstract individual. The

pragmatic explanation of religions is characteristic of this; these

are supposed to have been produced and maintained in the world by the

economic cunning of the priests, taking advantage of the ignorance

and credulity of the masses. But historical pragmatic does not

always present itself in the guise of this egoistic and pessimistic

inspiration. It is not fair to accuse it of egoism and utilitarianism,

when the true accusation should, as we have already said, be levelled

at its abstract individualism. This abstract individualism could be and

sometimes was conceived even as highly moral, for we certainly find

among the pragmatics sage legislators, good kings, and great men, who

benefit humanity by means of science, inventions, and well-organized

institutions. And if the greedy priest arranged the deceit of

religions, if the cruel despot oppressed weak and innocent people, and

if error was prolific and engendered the strangest and most foolish

customs, yet the goodness of the enlightened monarch and legislator

created the happy epochs, caused the arts to flourish, encouraged

poets, aided discoveries, encouraged industries. From these pragmatic

conceptions is derived the verbal usage whereby we speak of the age of

Pericles, of that of Augustus, of that of Leo X, or of that of Louis

XIV. And since fanciful explanations do not limit themselves merely

to individuals physically existing, but also employ facts and small

details, which are also made abstract and shut up in themselves, being

thus also turned into what Vico describes as 'imaginative universals,'

in like manner all these modes of explanation known as 'catastrophic'

and making hinge the salvation or the ruin of a whole society upon the

virtue of some single fact are also derived from pragmatic. Examples

of this, which have also become proverbial, because they refer to

concepts that have been persistently criticized by the historians of

our time, are the fall of the Roman Empire, explained as the result

of barbarian invasions, European civilization of the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries, as the result of the Crusades, the renascence

of classical literatures, as the result of the Turkish conquest of

Constantinople and of the immigration of the learned Byzantines into

Italy--and the like. And in just the same way as when the conception

of the single individual did not furnish a sufficient explanation

recourse was for that reason had to a multiplicity of individuals, to

their co-operation and conflicting action, so here, when the sole cause

adduced soon proved itself too narrow, an attempt was made to make up

for the insufficiency of the method by the search for and enumeration

of multiple historical causes. This enumeration threatened to proceed

to the infinite, but, finite or infinite as it might be, it never

explained the process to be explained, for the obvious reason that the

continuous is never made out of the discontinuous, however much the

latter may be multiplied and solidified. The so-called theory of the

causes or factors of history, which survives in modern consciousness,

together with several other mental habits of pragmatic, although

generally inclined to follow other paths, is rather a confession of

powerlessness to dominate history by means of individual causes,

or causes individually conceived, than a theory; far from being a

solution, it is but a reopening of the problem.

Pragmatic therefore fails to remain human--that is to say, to develop

itself as rationality; even in the human side to which it clings and

in which it wishes to maintain and oppose itself to the natural or

extra-natural; and having already made individuals irrational and

unhuman by making them abstract, it gradually has recourse to other

historical factors, and arrives finally at natural causes, which do

not differ at all in their abstractness from other individual causes.

This means that pragmatic, which had previously asserted itself as

humanism, falls back into naturalism, from which it had distinctly

separated itself. And it falls into it all the more, seeing that, as

has been noted, human individuals have been made abstract, not only

among themselves, but toward the rest of the universe, which remains

facing them, as though it were an enemy. What is it that really rules

history according to this conception? Is it man, or extra-human powers,

natural or divine? The claim that history exists only as an individual

experience is not maintainable; and in the pragmatic conception another

agent in history is always presumed, an extra-human being which, at

different times and to different thinkers, is known as fate, chance,

fortune, nature, God, or by some other name. During the period at which

pragmatic history flourished, and there was much talk of reason and

wisdom, an expression of a monarchical or courtly tinge is to be found

upon the lips of a monarch and of a philosopher who was his friend:

homage was paid to _sa Majesté le Hasard!_ Here too there is an attempt

to patch up the difficulty and to seek eclectic solutions; in order

to get out of it, we find pragmatic affirming that human affairs are

conducted half by prudence and half by fortune, that intelligence

contributes one part, fortune another, and so on. But who will assign

the just share to the two competitors? Will not he who does assign it

be the true and only maker of history? And since he who does assign

it cannot be man, we see once again how pragmatic leads directly to

transcendency and irrationality through its naturalism. It leads to

irrationality, accompanied by all its following of inconveniences

and by all the other dualisms that it brings with it and which are

particular aspects of itself, such as the impossibility of development,

regressions, the triumph of evil. The individual, engaged with external

forces however conceived, sometimes wins, at other times loses; his

victory itself is precarious, and the enemy is always victorious,

inflicting losses upon him and making his victories precarious.

Individuals are ants crushed by a piece of rock, and if some ant

escapes from the mass that falls upon it and reproduces the species,

which begins again the labour from the beginning, the rock will fall,

or always may fall, upon the new generation and may crush all of its

members, so that it is the arbiter of the lives of the industrious

ants, to which it does much injury and no good. This is as pessimistic

a view as can be conceived.

These difficulties and vain-tentatives of pragmatic historiography have

caused it to be looked upon with disfavour and to be rejected in favour

of a superior conception, which preserves the initial humanistic motive

and, removing from it the abstractness of the atomicized individual,

assures it against any falling back into agnosticism, transcendency,

or the despair caused by pessimism. The conception that has completed

the criticism of pragmatic and the redemption of humanism has been

variously and more or less well formulated in the course of the

history of thought as mind or reason that constructs history, as the

'providence' of mind or the 'astuteness' of reason.

The great value of this conception is that it changes humanism from

abstract to concrete, from monadistic or atomistic to idealistic,

from something barely human into something cosmic, from unhuman

humanism, such as that of man shut up in himself and opposed to man,

into humanism that is really human, the humanity common to men,

indeed to the whole universe, which is all humanity, even in its most

hidden recesses--that is to say, spirituality. And history, according

to this conception, as it is no longer the work of nature or of an

extra-mundane God, so it is not the impotent work of the empirical

and unreal individual, interrupted at every moment, but the work

of that individual which is truly real and is the eternal spirit

individualizing itself. For this reason it has no adversary at all

opposed to it, but every adversary is at the same time its subject

--that is to say, is one of the aspects of that dialecticism which

constitutes its inner being. Again, it does not seek its principle of

explanation in a particular act of thought or will, or in a single

individual or in a multitude of individuals, or in an event given as

the cause of other events, or in a collection of events that form the

cause of a single event, but seeks and places it in the process itself,

which is born of thought and returns to thought, and is intelligible

through the auto-intelligibility of thought, which never has need of

appealing to anything external to itself in order to understand itself.

The explanation of history becomes so truly, because it coincides with

its explication; whereas explanation by means of abstract causes is a

breaking up of the process; the living having been slain, there is a

forced attempt made to obtain life by setting the severed head again

upon the shoulders.

When the historians of our day, and the many sensible folk who do not

make a profession of philosophy, repeat that the history of the world

does not depend upon the will of individuals, upon such accidents as

the length of Cleopatra's nose, or upon anecdotes; that no historical

event has ever been the result of deception or misunderstanding, but

that all have been due to persuasion and necessity; that there is some

one who has more intelligence than any individual whatever--the world;

that the explanation of a fact is always to be sought in the entire

organism and not in a single part torn from the other parts; that

history could not have been developed otherwise than it has developed,

and that it obeys its own iron logic; that every fact has its reason

and that no individual is completely wrong; and numberless propositions

of the same sort, which I have assembled promiscuously--they are

perhaps not aware that with such henceforth obvious statements they

are repeating the criticism of pragmatic history (and implicitly that

of theological and naturalistic history) and affirming the truth of

idealistic history. Were they aware of this, they would not mingle

with these propositions others which are their direct contradiction,

relating to causes, accidents, decadences, climates, races, and so

on, which represent the detritus of the conception that has been

superseded. For the rest, it is characteristic of the consciousness

called common or vulgar to drag along with it an abundant detritus of

old, dead concepts mingled with the new ones; but this does not detract

from the importance of its enforced recognition of the new concept,

which it substantially follows in its judgments.

Owing to the already mentioned resolution of all historiographical

questions into general philosophy, it would not be possible to

give copious illustrations of the new concept of history which the

nineteenth century has accepted in place of the pragmatic conception

without giving a lengthy exposition of general philosophy, which, in

addition to the particular inconvenience its presence would have here,

would lead to the repetition of things elsewhere explained. Taking the

position that history is the work, not of the abstract individual, but

of reason or providence, as admitted, I intend rather to correct an

erroneous mode of expressing that doctrine which I believe that I have

detected. I mean the form given to it by Vico and by Hegel, according

to which Providence or Reason makes use of the particular ends and

passions of men, in order to conduct them unconsciously to more lofty

spiritual conditions, making use for this purpose of benevolent cunning.

Were this form exact, or were it necessary to take it literally (and

not simply as an imaginative and provisional expression of the truth),

I greatly fear that a shadow of dualism and transcendency would appear

in the heart of the idealistic conception. For in this position of

theirs toward the Idea or Providence, individuals would have to be

considered, if not as _deluded_ (satisfied indeed beyond their desires

and hopes), then certainly as _illuded_, even though benevolently

illuded. Individuals and Providence, or individuals and Reason, would

not make one, but two; and the individual would be inferior and the

Idea superior--that is to say, dualism and the reciprocal transcendency

of God and the world would persist. This, on the other hand, would not

be at variance from the historical point of view with what has been

several times observed as to the theological residue at the bottom

of Hegel's, and yet more of Vico's, thought. Now the claim of the

idealistic conception is that individual and Idea make one and not

two--that is to say, perfectly coincide and are identified. For this

reason, there must be no talking (save metaphorically) of the wisdom of

the Idea and of the folly or illusion of individuals.

Nevertheless it seems indubitably certain that the individual acts

through the medium of infinite illusions, proposing to himself ends

that he fails to attain and attaining ends that he has not seen.

Schopenhauer (imitating Hegel) has made popular the illusions of

love, by means of which the will leads the individual to propagate

the species; and we all know that illusions are not limited to those

that men and women exercise toward one another (_les tromperies

réciproques_), but that they enter into our every act, which is always

accompanied by hopes and mirages that are not followed by realization.

And the illusion of illusions seems to be this: that the individual

believes himself to be toiling to live and to intensify his life more

and more, whereas he is really toiling to die. He wishes to see his

work completed as the affirmation of his life, and its completion is

the passing away of the work; he toils to obtain peace in life, but

peace is on the contrary death, which alone is peace. How then are we

to deny this dualism between the illusion of the individual and the

reality of the work, between the individual and the Idea? How are we to

refute the only explanation which seems to compose in some measure the

discord--namely, that the Idea turns the illusions of the individual to

its own ends, even though this doctrine lead inevitably to a sort of

transcendency of the Idea?

But the real truth is that what results from the observations and

objections above exposed is not the illusion of the individual who

loves, who tries to complete his work, who sighs for peace, but rather

the illusion of him who believes that the individual is illuded: the

illusory is the illusion itself. And this illusion appears in the

phenomenology of the spirit as the result of the well-known abstractive

process, which breaks up unity in an arbitrary manner and in this case

separates the result from the process or actual acting, in which alone

the former is real; the accompaniment from the accompanied, which is

all one with the accompaniment, because there is not spirit and its

escort, but only the one spirit in its development, the single moments

of the process, of the continuity, which is their soul; and so on.

That illusion arises in the individual when he begins to reflect upon

himself, and at the beginning of that reflection, which is at the same

time a dialectical process. But in concrete reflection, or rather in

concrete consciousness, he discovers that there is no end that has not

been realized, as well as it could, in the process, in which it was

never an absolute end--that is to say, an abstract end, but both a

means and an end.

To return to the popular theory of Schopenhauer, only he who looks

upon men as animals, or worse than animals, can believe that love is a

process that leads only to the biological propagation of the species,

when every man knows that he fecundates his own soul above all prior

to the marriage couch, and that images and thoughts and projects and

actions are created before children and in addition to them. Certainly,

we are conscious of the moments of an action as it develops--that is

to say, of its passage and not of its totality seen in the light of

a new spiritual situation, such as we strive to obtain when, as we

say, we leave the tumult behind us and set ourselves to write our own

history. But there is no illusion, either now or then; neither now nor

then is there the abstract individual face to face with a Providence

who succeeds in deceiving him for beneficial ends, acting rather as

a doctor than as a serious educator, and treating the race of men as

though they were animals to train and make use of, instead of men to

educate--that is to say, develop.

After having concentrated the mind upon a thought of Vico and of

Hegel, can it be possible to set ourselves down to examine those of

others which afford material to the controversies of historians and

methodologists of history of our time? These represent the usual form

in which appear the problems concerning the relation between the

individual and the Idea, between pragmatic and idealistic history.

Perhaps the patience necessary for the descent into low haunts is

meritorious and our duty; perhaps there may be some useful conclusion

to be drawn from these common disputes; but I must beg to be excused

for not taking part in them and for limiting myself to the sole remark

that the question which has been for some time discussed, whether

history be the history of 'masses' or of 'individuals,' would be

laughable in its very enunciation, if we were to understand by 'mass'

what the word implies, a complex of individuals. And since it is not

a good method to attribute laughable ideas to adversaries, it may be

supposed that on this occasion what is meant by 'mass' is something

else, which moves the mass of individuals. In this case, anyone can see

that the problem is the same as that which has just been examined. The

conflict between 'collectivistic' and 'individualistic' historiography

will never be composed so long as the former assigns to collectivity

the power that is creative of ideas and institutions, and the latter

assigns it to the individual of genius, for both affirmations are true

in what they include and false in what they exclude--that is to say,

not only in their exclusion of the opposed thesis, but also in the

tacit exclusion, which they both make, of totality as idea.

A warning as to a historiographical method, so similar in appearance

to that which I have been defending as to be confounded with it, may

perhaps be more opportune. This method, which is variously called

_sociological, institutional,_ and _of values,_ preserves among the

variety of its content and the inequality of mental level noticeable

in its supporters the general and constant characteristic of believing

that true history consists of the history of societies, institutions,

and human values, not of individual values. The history of individuals,

according to this view, is excluded, as being a parallel or inferior

history, and its inferiority is held to be due either to the slight

degree of interest that it is capable of arousing or to its lack of

intelligibility. In the latter case (by an inversion on this occasion

of the attitude of contempt which was noted in pragmatic history) it

is handed over to chronicle or romance. But in such dualism as this,

and in the disagreement which persists owing to that dualism, lies the

profound difference between the empirical and naturalistic conceptions

of value, of institutions, and of societies, and the idealistic

conception. This conception does not contemplate the establishment of

an abstract history of the spirit, of the abstract universal, side by

side with or beyond abstract individualistic or pragmatic history,

but the understanding that individual and idea, taken separately, are

two equivalent abstractions, each equally unfitted for supplying

its subject to history, and that true history is the history of the

individual in so far as he is universal and of the universal in so

far as individual. It is not a question of abolishing Pericles to the

advantage of politics, or Plato to the advantage of philosophy, or

Sophocles to the advantage of tragedy; but to think and to represent

politics, philosophy, and tragedy as Pericles, Plato, and Sophocles,

and these as each one of the others in one of their particular

moments. Because if each one of these is the shadow of a dream outside

its relation with the spirit, so likewise is the spirit outside its

individualizations, and to attain to universality in the conception of

history is to render both equally secure with that security which they

mutually confer upon one another. Were the existence of Pericles, of

Sophocles, and of Plato indifferent, would not the existence of the

idea have for that very reason been pronounced indifferent? Let him who

cuts individuals out of history but pay close attention and he will

perceive that either he has not cut them out at all, as he imagined, or

he has cut out with them history itself.

VII

CHOICE AND PERIODIZATION

Since a fact is historical in so far as it is thought, and since

nothing exists outside thought, there can be no sense whatever in the

question, What are _historical facts_ and what are _non-historical

facts?_ A non-historical fact would be a fact that has not been thought

and would therefore be non-existent, and so far no one has yet met

with a non-existent fact. A historical thought links itself to and

follows another historical thought, and then another, and yet another;

and however far we navigate the great sea of being, we never leave the

well-defined sea of thought. But it remains to be explained how the

illusion is formed that there are two orders of facts, historical and

non-historical. The explanation is easy when we recollect what has been

said as to the chroniclizing of history which dies as history, leaving

behind it the mute traces of its life, and also as to the function of

erudition or philology, which preserves these traces for the ends of

culture, arranging scattered items of news, documents, and monuments

in an orderly manner. News, documents, and monuments are innumerable,

and to collect them all would not only be impossible, but contrary to

the ends themselves of culture, which, though aided in its work by the

moderate and even copious supply of such things, would be hindered and

suffocated by their exuberance, not to say infinity. We consequently

observe that the annotator of news transcribes some items and omits

the rest; the collector of papers arranges and ties up in a bundle a

certain number of them, tearing up or burning or sending to the dealer

in such things a very large quantity, which forms the majority; the

collector of antiques places some objects in glass cases, others in

temporary safe custody, others he resolutely destroys or allows to be

destroyed; if he does otherwise, he is not an intelligent collector,

but a maniacal amasser, well fitted to provide (as he has provided)

the comic type of the antiquarian for fiction and comedy. For this

reason, not only are papers jealously collected and preserved in

public archives, and lists made of them, but efforts are also made

to discard those that are useless. It is for this reason that in the

recensions of philologists we always hear the same song in praise of

the learned man who has made a 'sober' use of documents, of blame for

him who has followed a different method and included what is vain and

superfluous in his volumes of annals, of selections from archives,

or of collections of documents. All learned men and philologists, in

fact, select, and all are advised to select. And what is the logical

criterion of this selection? There is none: no logical criterion can

be named that shall determine what news or what documents are or are

not useful and important, just because we are here occupied with a

practical and not with a scientific problem. Indeed, this lack of a

logical criterion is the foundation of the sophism that tyrannizes

over maniacal collectors, who reasonably affirm that everything can

be of use, and would therefore unreasonably preserve everything--they

wear themselves out in accumulating old clothes and odds and ends

of all sorts, over which they mount guard with jealous affection.

The criterion is the choice itself, conditioned, like every economic

act, by knowledge of the actual situation, and in this case by the

practical and scientific needs of a definite moment or epoch. This

selection is certainly conducted with intelligence, but not with the

application of a philosophic criterion, and is justified only in and

by itself. For this reason we speak of the fine tact, or scent, or

instinct of the collector or learned man. Such a process of selection

may quite well make use of apparent logical distinctions, as those

between public and private facts, capital and secondary documents,

beautiful or ugly, significant or insignificant monuments; but in

final analysis the decision is always given from practical motives,

and is summed up in the act of preserving or neglecting. Now from this

preserving or neglecting, in which our action is realized, is afterward

invented an _objective_ quality, attributed to facts, which leads to

their being spoken of as 'facts that are worthy' and 'facts that are

not worthy of history,' of 'historical' and 'non-historical' facts. But

all this is an affair of imagination, of vocabulary, and of rhetoric,

which in no way changes the substance of things.

When history is confounded with erudition and the methods of the

one are unduly transferred to the other, and when the metaphorical

distinction that has just been noted is taken in a literal sense, we

are asked how it is possible to avoid going astray in the infinity of

facts, and with what criterion it is possible to effect the separation

of 'historical' facts from 'those that are not worthy of history.'

But there is no fear of going astray in history, because, as we have

seen, the problem is in every case prepared by life, and in every case

the problem is solved by thought, which passes from the confusion of

life to the distinctness of consciousness; a given problem with a

given solution: a problem that generates other problems, but is never

a problem of choice between two or more facts, but on each occasion

a creation of the unique fact, the fact thought. Choice does not

appear in it, any more than in art, which passes from the obscurity

of sentiment to the clearness of the representation, and is never

embarrassed between the images to be chosen, because itself creates the

image, the unity of the image.

By thus confounding two things, not only is an insoluble problem

created, but the very distinction between facts that can and facts

that cannot be neglected is also denaturalized and rendered void.

This distinction is quite valid as regards erudition, for facts that

can be neglected are always facts--that is to say, they are traces of

facts, in the form of news, documents, and monuments, and for this

reason one can understand how they can be looked upon as a class to

be placed side by side with the other class of facts that cannot be

neglected. But non-historical facts--that is to say, facts that have

not been thought--would be nothing, and when placed beside historical

facts--that is to say, thought as a species of the same genus--they

would communicate their nullity to those also, and would dissolve their

own distinctness, together with the concept of history.

After this, it does not seem necessary to examine the characteristics

that have been proposed as the basis for this division of facts into

historical and non-historical. The assumption being false, the manner

in which it is treated in its particulars remains indifferent and

without importance in respect to the fundamental criticism of the

division itself. It may happen (and this is usually the case) that

the characteristics and the differences enunciated have some truth in

themselves, or at least offer some problem for solution: for example,

when by historical facts are meant general facts and by non-historical

facts those that are individual. Here we find the problem of the

relation of the individual and the universal. Or, again, by historical

facts are sometimes meant those that treat of history proper, and by

non-historical the stray references of chronicles, and here we find the

problem as to the relation between history and chronicle. But regarded

as an attempt to decide logically of what facts history should treat

and what neglect, and to assign to each its quality, such divisions are

all equally erroneous.